OFFICIAL REGISTER OF
THE UNITED STATES
List of Postal Employees in Hyde County, North Carolina (Postmaster, Clerks, and Rural
Free Delivery Carriers)Kindly submitted by Merlin S. Berry

When the
Continental Congress named Benjamin Franklin the first Postmaster General
in 1775, the United States was a weak confederation of colonies scattered
along the eastern seaboard. The postal system that the Congress created
helped bind the new nation together, support the growth of commerce, and
ensure a free flow of ideas and information.

The Post
Office Department of the Confederate States of America was established
on February 21, 1861, by an Act of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate
States. On March 6, 1861, the day after Montgomery Blair's appointment
by President Abraham Lincoln as Postmaster General of the United States,
John Henninger Reagan, a former U. S. Congressman, was appointed Postmaster
General of the Confederate States of America by Jefferson Davis, President
of the Confederate States.

South Carolina,
Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas already had
seceded from the Nation. In the following months, Virginia, Arkansas, North
Carolina, and most of Tennessee followed suit. Reagan instructed southern
postmasters to continue to render their accounts to the United States as
before until the Confederate postal system was organized. Meanwhile, he
sent job offers to southern men in the Post Office Department in Washington.
Many accepted and brought along their expertise, as well as copies of postal
reports, forms in use, postal maps, etc.

In May 1861,
Reagan issued a proclamation stating that he would officially assume control
of the postal service of the Confederate States on June 1, 1861. Postmaster
General Blair responded by ordering the cessation of United States mail
service throughout the South on May 31, 1861.

Although
an able administrator headed the Confederate Post Office Department, its
mail service was continuously interrupted. Through a combination of pay
and personnel cuts, postage rate increases, and the streamlining of mail
routes, Reagan eliminated the deficit that existed in the postal service
in the South. But blockades and the invading army from the North, as well
as a growing scarcity of postage stamps, severely hampered postal operations.

The resumption
of federal mail service in the southern states took place gradually as
the war came to an end. By November 15, 1865, 241 mail routes had been
restored in southern states; by November 1, 1866, 3,234 post offices out
of 8,902 were returned to federal control in the South.

Today it
is difficult to envision the isolation that was the lot of farm families
in early America. In the days before telephones, radios, or televisions
were common, the farmer's main links to the outside world were the mail
and the newspapers that came by mail to the nearest post office. Since
the mail had to be picked up, this meant a trip to the post office, often
involving a day's travel, round-trip. The farmer might delay picking up
mail for days, weeks, or even months until the trip could be coupled with
one for supplies, food, or equipment.

Critics of
the rural free delivery plan claimed it was impractical and too expensive
to have a postal carrier trudge over rutted roads and through forests trying
to deliver mail in all kinds of weather. However, the farmers, without
exception, were delighted with the new service and the new world open to
them. After receiving free delivery for a few months, one observed that
it would take away part of life to give it up. A Missouri farmer looked
back on his life and calculated that, in 15 years, he had traveled 12,000
miles going to and from his post office to get the mail.